yeah, yeah, i know, two shows in two days

i was too interested in edumacating in the ways of garfield halloweens and the great pumpkin to worry about a review last night, hehe.

*theatre snob alert*

one thing that they tell us as directors is that when you're watching a show or watching actors in general, you have to look at what they can do, and not judge them all based on professional standards. that's how high school drama teachers can see a professional show and think it's awesome but still be proud of their high schoolers (not saying high schoolers aren't good actors...but they really haven't had time to develop a process or anything ).

this was something i had to take into mind last night. rocky was performed at a community theatre. i knew muncie had a community theatre...but i didn't know that they had two! i was pleasantly surprised to see that not only do they have a proscenium theatre (the muncie civic), but they also have a studio theatre (the main street studio theatre), which was where it was performed last night.

so this was a community production. keep this in mind.

frankenfurter was fantastic. a couple of his outfits were...neeeeeh, but in general he was great. he didn't look like tim curry, but he had the talent to pull off frankenfurter, so yeah

brad was amazing. i happen to know him personally, but i didn't know that he was in this particular show, and i'd never actually seen him perform--i'd just had some classes with him. and he was great. his vocal performance was outstanding. his acting could've used a little work, but his vocal performance was great.

riff raff and the neckless investigator were pretty good too. it was a huge surprise when the neckless investigator came back out and had taken out his hair from under his hat...he had a lot to hide up there!! haha.

the girls( meaning columbia, magenta and janet)...erm...to tell the truth, i really didn't care for them. columbia had the movie columbia's signature squeaky nasally voice down, but she didn't enunciate nearly enough to let the audience know what she was saying. and when she was singing, she had what and and i like to call a moment worthy of new orleans (the three of us watched a bunch of "talent acts" in new orleans a few years ago and they were AWFUL. anything worthy of new orleans is horrid indeed). in particular with her, i didn't see enough discovery. see, even with fun shows such as rocky horror, actors must still have a vision of themselves in the play and they need to experience things with their character. it kind of ruins the illusion you're trying to create or the humor you're trying to culture if things just come out of nowhere---such as telling frankenfurter that she's had it up to here and that she loved him. janet has never had voice lessons in her life. she has great boobs, no lie. but she's never had voice lessons. which isn't necessarily a bad thing, except that she went from belting in this loud voice when she was within her belting range to this quiet little mousy head voice when she crossed her break, and the audience could barely hear her when she had the head voice going. commented, and i quite agree with him, that this could have been combated on all the girls' parts if they had said some of the harder things to sing in a dramatic voice. i've seen and heard many actors do this to cover up vocal imperfections and it works pretty well for the most part, along with adding a little something to the song.

the director seemed as though they were pretty consumed with sexing up rocky horror, and there's nothing wrong with sexing it up more...as long as you give some variety and really make it sexed-up as opposed to half-assing it. there was a lot of repitition, such as magenta just repeatedly humping the air and grabbing her crotch. one can only do that for so long before it becomes boring.

it wasn't a bad experience, don't get me wrong. i still had fun. but i do believe i prefer the movie more. although, i'll see a professional production of rocky onstage before i totally knock it as a stage show--after all, that's how it got started.